"In the ruling we received today, in which our charges are rejected, the Zagreb Municipal Prosecutor's Office has found that the transcript is not true to the audio recording because certain words were left out or mistyped and certain speakers were misidentified," the team of lawyers said in a lengthy statement.
Noting that they were "completely surprised" by the decision of the Municipal Prosecutor's Office to declare the transcript authentic despite this finding, the lawyers said that "the audio recording also provides evidence that the transcript was deliberately falsified" and that "there is no doubt that the transcript that was sent to the Office of the Prosecutor in The Hague is actually a forgery."
Having compared the transcript with the audio recording, the Zagreb Municipal Prosecutor's Office rejected the charges by Gotovina's lawyers on Monday, concluding that the transcript of the meeting between the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and the military leadership, held on 31 July 1995 on the northern Adriatic archipelago of Brijuni, was authentic.
The lawyers view the typing mistakes made in the transcript as "deliberate manipulation aimed at discrediting General Gotovina".
The statement cited as an example comments made by General Vladimir Zagorec on the purchase of weapons on the black market, which were wrongly attributed to Gotovina "in order to portray him as a gun smuggler and criminal."
"We possess evidence showing that the name of General Zagorec was intentionally substituted with the name of General Gotovina in order to portray him as a person responsible for the purchase of illegal weapons for Croatia," the statement said.
The lawyers said that intentional manipulation of the transcript with the aim of discrediting Gotovina was conspiracy "whose effect can be seen in the 4 May 2005 issue of Vecernji List".
Citing the article headlined "London Views Gotovina As Way of Getting to IRA", the lawyers said that the article was based on "the disinformation made by the people who manipulated with the Brijuni transcript" and added that they intended to criminally prosecute "the manipulators and forgers" before a competent Croatian court.
The lawyers representing General Gotovina are Luka Misetic, Ivo Farcic, Ante Vukorepa, Marijan Pedisic and Marin Ivanovic.